Goldsmith's was a department store founded in Memphis, Tennessee in 1870 by German immigrant brothers Jacob and Isaac Goldsmith. With a $500 investment, they opened a dry goods store on a muddy lane called Beale Street. It grew into a chain largely located in the Memphis metropolitan area, until 2005, when the nameplate was eliminated and replaced by Macy's. Goldsmith's stores were subsequently folded into Federated's Macy's Central division, reorganized into Macy's South, and today into a differently configured Macy's Central, the current division encompassing the stores.
Goldsmith's original store on Beale Street was relocated in 1895 to a larger facility at Main and Gayoso, which it occupied through most of the 20th century. In 1952 Goldsmiths expanded its downtown location, expanding into the adjoining former Gayoso Hotel. The department store began to build suburban locations in the 1960s, beginning with its Oak Court store at Poplar and Perkins. By 1978 Goldsmiths occupied 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m2) of retail space and 200,000 sq ft (19,000 m2) of warehouse space in the city.
Goldsmith's was acquired by Federated Department Stores in 1959, and added in 1988 to an Atlanta, Georgia-headquartered division led by that city's Rich's chain. The downtown Memphis location was closed in 1993. The division expanded to include Cincinnati, Ohio-based Lazarus in 1995, with all of the division co-branded with Macy's in 2003. At the time of the most recent name change to Macy's, five Goldsmith's-Macy's stores remained in existence. Additional stores were previously operated in the Raleigh neighborhood of northeast Memphis, and in the current Pembroke Square area of downtown Memphis.
Macy's Inc.'s current employee volunteer program, Partners in Time, was founded in 1989 at Goldsmith's (and Rich's) as a way to give back to the community.
Among the popular slogans of the store, one was "Memphis' Greatest Store," words seen prior to the name change on the outside of the store at the Oak Court Mall. Two other widely used slogans were "All about the South" and "A Mid-South tradition since 1870."
Famous quotes containing the word goldsmith:
“Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied.”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)